


gravity and waggery

by lyres



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Cats, Developing Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Misunderstandings, Museums
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28418346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyres/pseuds/lyres
Summary: The stairs creak, and Martin freezes. Sasha has the decency to stop in her tracks and look up, eyes darting to the door. “That's not good.”“What's he even doing up here?”Other than coming to kill me,supplies Martin's mind helpfully. “I thought he was sorting through  donation receipts today!”“One of us can distract him,” Sasha offers, and immediately sneezes. “Not me though. Allergy's a dead giveaway.”“I'm not legally allowed to move,” says Tim, making no move to dislodge either of the two kittens currently attached to him. “Sorry, Martin.”(In which Martin embarks on a hopeless quest to hide four cats and a monumental crush from his boss, Jon indulges his anarchist streak, and Tim and Sasha have no qualms encouraging shenanigans.)
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 33
Kudos: 334





	gravity and waggery

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Jubilate Agno - please have a look at [this extract](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45173/jubilate-agno) for the loveliest cat poetry you will ever read.

“Um. Guys?”

When Martin pokes his head into their shared office, Sasha gives him a withering stare. It could kill. Martin is pretty sure it could kill. It _is_ somewhat undermined by the fact that Sasha is currently wrapped in a minimum of five layers, her face disappearing almost entirely in the woolly scarf wound around her neck, leaving only slightly foggy glasses and the disapproving eyes behind them exposed.

“Martin, I'm so sorry, but if the next three words out of your mouth aren't 'The heating repair person is here', I can't in good conscience let you continue.”

The slight shiver in her voice doesn't help. “That's – six words, I think, actually,” he points out. “Uh, there's – there's a bit of a problem?”

“Is there now.”

“I don't mean the heating!” Although that is a problem. Very much so. The only reason Martin ever went upstairs to begin with was because he was decently sure the museum's upper storey would be even two degrees warmer, and he simply ended up finding a different problem instead. (But then, for him, the lack of heating admittedly matters less now: The panicked hammering of his heart does an excellent job of making sure he doesn't catch a chill.) “There's another... situation.”

Tim, designated office space heater who manages to somehow still be fine in his usual jeans and Henley, looks up from his needlework. Ah. “ _Is there_ , now.”

Martin winces. It really is the worst possible day for even more to go wrong. They've all – save Tim – spent the entire morning shivering, Jon's refusing to acknowledge his state of exhaustion in trying to get caught up on paperwork, Tim is punishment-sowing inventory number tags into the horrifying dresses of potentially cursed dolls after his latest experiment in “lightening the mood” went sideways, and Sasha was dealing with a particularly nasty phone-call when Martin left earlier. (They may have lost a loaned artefact. It happens. Too often, really. Bad when the item's practically worthless, worse when it happens to have been loaned by a duchess.)

“It's not a visitor, is it?” Tim looks suspicious. “Don't tell me we've sold our first ticket this week.”

“It's not a visitor.” Martin huffs. “What are we, the National Gallery?”

Magnus Museum draws an impressive average of twenty visitors a week and is kept open solely by force of the very durable string by which an obscenely rich Magnus ancestor hangs in the board of trustees. It's tiny enough to feel thoroughly unwelcoming and has been voted Worst Museum in London no less than three times since the nineties. Of _course_ it's not a visitor.

Martin can't say it, though. He cannot possibly detail the current circumstances out loud with their boss approximately five metres and a half-open door away. Jon has the wildly precise hearing of a bat. “There's something upstairs? In paper restoration? If you – maybe have a minute?”

Sasha's glare turns more withering still.

“It's warmer up there,” tries Martin.

His co-workers are out of their seats within a second.

Their paper restoration room is, in Jon's words, a waste of good office space. A considerable number of Magnus's graphite sketches are in their collection, and some of the books could use a touch-up or at least a professional assessment as well, so they were promised an on-site restoration specialist roundabout a year ago. They cleared a room. They put up a desk. Twelve months later, no one has been hired, and the office has been sitting unused except for when Martin seeks it out whenever he Needs A Moment.

(He's been Needing A Moment a bit more frequently of late, now that Jon appears to be willing to actually talk to him. In some ways, being snapped at was easier to deal with. Being snapped at, Martin's used to. What's a man to do with the suggestion of a smile and a “Thank you” for the plain gift of tea and biscuits? Until Martin finds an answer, occasional meltdowns in an empty office will have to do.)

Until, of course, he walked in this morning to find the room very much not unoccupied anymore.

“Oh my God,” whispers Sasha, barely audible over the symphony of pitiful little mewls. “Oh, my _God_.”

“Aw, look at that!” Tim is crouching already, stretching out his hand and offers a few curled-in fingers for any of the three very wobbly kittens to sniff. “That's fantastic, Martin! You've actually found a group of visitors who aren't a pest.”

“How did they even get in?” Sasha is more careful, but no less enamoured, having instead approached the mother who lies close to the broken radiator and seems more than pleased to be relieved of her parenting duties for a short while. She sniffs at Sasha's hand, then claims it for herself with a generous rub of her head. “Oh, God bless, she must have carried them all up here.”

“Jon smokes on the fire escape sometimes, I think,” says Tim. He's scooped up the bravest of the kittens – striped and ginger, setting it starkly apart from its darker-furred siblings – and is cradling it close to his chest, allowing it to bite ineffectively at his finger. Martin thinks that this is all going very wrong. “Might have left the window open. They'd take that as an invitation. I mean, it's still warmer in here than outside.”

“They have to be five weeks old, at least,” diagnoses Sasha. “But she would have had them outside. I wonder how she picked this of all places to hide in.” She's gently petting the mother's neck, which seems to be welcome. Martin has no idea where to put himself: his state of alarm has not yet moved from _My boss is going to kill me_ to _Oh God these little balls of fluff look like different stages of toasted marshmallows_. Meanwhile, his co-workers appear to have skipped stage one.

“Oh, no,” murmurs Martin as he is pulled headlong towards stage two. “Ohhh, no, no, no. Absolutely not.”

The kitten approaching him on unsteady legs squeals pathetically. It is brown and white and stripey and Martin does not have his own permission to kneel slowly on the floor and scoop it up. It still happens. The weight in his hands is – Christ, it's almost nothing, and the little thing fits comfortably into one of his palms, and its green eyes are entirely too large for its tiny face and Martin is going to _die_.

Of affection, first, and then because Jon will most definitely have his head.

“What are we going to do?” The question, meant to sound insistent, falls utterly flat. In Martin's palms, the kitten has toppled over and immediately accepted its fate of now lying down. It blinks blearily up at him. “They can't just – stay here.” His voice becomes weaker on every word.

“Well, on a practical level, they're definitely a hazard to the items,” muses Sasha. “Even if they don't start scratching up furniture, there's the risk of them having carried in pests, especially since she seems to be a stray, and then there's the issue of litter –”

“However,” says Tim pointedly, and then nothing. He's sitting cross-legged on the floor, Kitten Two (deep, midnight black fur; a single white paw) currently attempting to climb up his chest as Kitten One, of red fur fame, is curled safely in the crook of his elbow.

Martin, still helplessly holding Kitten Three in his cupped hands, makes a feeble attempt at setting it down which is immediately stifled by the kitten's valiant manoeuvre of digging its small claws into the wool of Martin's jumper. It yells in protest, and Martin cradles it in his hands again with little interspersed whispers of “Sorry, sorry.” _Sorry_ doesn't appear to cut it. The kitten looks like it's frowning at him, almost, narrowing its eyes and refusing to get comfortable again. The message is clear: he has betrayed its trust.

As a former Georgian home, Magnus Museum sits, almost obnoxiously bourgeois, in a residential neighbourhood tucked away in one of the quieter bits of Chelsea. Being the type of listed building that no one really wants to pour an excessive amount of money into, it hasn't had simple renovations on the increasingly creaky stairs since the early 1900s, and as such offers a built-in alarm system for anyone in the upper rooms with something to hide.

The stairs creak, and Martin freezes. Sasha has the decency to stop in her tracks and look up, eyes darting to the door. “That's not good.”

“What's he even doing up here?” _Other than coming to kill me_ , supplies Martin's mind helpfully. “I thought he was sorting through all the donation receipts today!”

“One of us can distract him,” Sasha offers, and immediately sneezes. “Not me though. Allergy's a dead giveaway.”

“I'm not legally allowed to move,” says Tim, making no move to dislodge either of the two kittens currently attached to him. “Sorry, Martin.”

“Oh, for the love of –” Remarkably quick considering the heartbreak involved, Martin pours Kitten Three from his palms onto Tim's shoulder and stumbles out of the office. He only manages to shut the door behind himself and make it look – hopefully – as if he's just exited the much less suspicious laboratory (Magnus was an eccentric, to say the least) instead of the restoration room before Jon appears at the top of the stairs, hands full of forms and frowning deeply.

“Hi,” says Martin, barely breathing. Christ, if he isn't the worst possible person for this job – and he's not even a bad liar, he's quite good at it, really, it's only the spontaneity of the situation and the fact that Jon looks so tired already and really should have a sit down or maybe a nap instead of being blatantly deceived by his employees and – “I was just looking for you!”

Jon narrows his eyes. (Lovely eyes, not that Martin should be paying attention to that right _now_. He's heard Tim say, not without righteous indignation, that “The man's lashes are wasted on him,” and Martin is inclined to disagree: they'd be wasted on anyone else.) “In the laboratory?”

“Oh, uh, no, of course not, I was just – checking the – the pest monitors. Before I started looking for you. Sasha saw a moth the other day; can't be too careful with our textiles, and so on, you know?”

Surely, Jon can hear the hammering of his heart. Surely he can. _Ears like a bat_.

“Right,” Jon says slowly, keeping his eyes steadily on Martin.

At best, having a crush on the boss who hates you is a little embarrassing. At worst, as Martin has only just learned, it ends in the untimely death which follows failing to come up with a good lie that'll stop said boss from discovering no less than four cats in your workplace. And of course it happens when they've only just started getting along the slightest bit better, too, with Jon agreeing to the occasional lunch together, even, and hardly ever scowling at the offer of a hot drink anymore. (Well, the hot drinks part might just be the broken heating. Unless it's all the broken heating? Does perpetually freezing mellow people out, maybe? Christ, this was never going to end well.)

Jon's frown is deepening, now, as Martin still hasn't moved from the spot, effectively blocking his way. “And you were looking for me because...?”

“Oh! The, uh, bill came in for that new set of custom storage boxes you ordered? And today's the last day to sign off on it; sorry, must have slipped to the bottom of the pile, somehow, so – it's urgent. Now.”

Jon sighs, and Martin feels hollowly triumphant. Now there's something that can still be relied upon: Jon's assumption of his incompetence.

“Fantastic, a late bill's just what we need right now. Has Sasha said anything about the lost medallion yet, or can we expect to be sued by Her Grace as well, this week?”

 _Probably_ , thinks Martin, and says, suddenly far too aware of an allergic Sasha determined to pet a cat nonetheless a single door away, “Not sure. I think Sasha's gone out for her lunch break.”

“Right.” Jon sighs, and beneath his exhale, Martin thinks he hears something else from behind the door he is still very bodily shielding.

“Speaking of,” he says, more loudly than he needs to, and feels momentarily impressed with himself for timing it perfectly to cover the sound of Sasha sneezing. “Have – have you eaten yet? I, uh, couldn't really choose between sandwiches in the shop this morning, but there was a queue behind me, and it was really early still, so I sort of – panicked and got both? If you want one, I mean?”

Jon's frown, in fairness, is mild, but it still stops Martin's heart for a split second, convinced that this is it, the time he's finally pushed it too far. They're not even _friends_ , for Christ's sake.

“I could have packed lunch,” says Jon instead, in a mock-defensive tone that seems... ironic, almost?

Martin bites back a smile. “But – you didn't, did you.”

“Fine.” Jon shakes his head, an unspoken _Never mind_. “But I'm paying you back for it. Knowing this area, you probably had to get it at a Paul or something.”

Following him downstairs, Martin nearly forgets to feel triumphant about the successful diversion for how real it all feels. He hums in half-agreement, secretly glad Jon can't see him smile. “I can neither confirm nor deny.”

It remains sour sense of victory. Not that that's unjustified, what with four very unsolveable problems having made a comfortable home in the upper storey, only – only when they share their lunch and some stifled small-talk in the break room, Jon asks if they're handling the cold all right, and when he brings Jon a cup of tea by his office that afternoon, Jon smiles weakly and thanks him for something to warm his hands, and, well. Martin is only human.

The situation will resolve itself. He's confident that it will. Until then, surely there's no harm in enjoying what bright spots he can find.

The situation does not resolve itself. By the end of the week, they've bought (and hidden under the shelf; if worse comes to worst, it won't be the first thing Jon sees if he ever does wander into the restoration room) a litter box as well as food and water bowls, and they've been patiently refilling the kibble which the Duchess, named in affectionate acknowledgement of an imminent lawsuit, goes through in a day. There is still no heating. Keeping Jon away from the upper storey is becoming increasingly difficult.

“I think it's safe to say we've hit a new low,” says Sasha. She keeps her voice soft, huddled together as they are in their office, with Jon next door still on the phone with security after their latest desperate manoeuvre involved Sasha tripping the fire alarm on purpose.

“Not that anyone ever listens to me, but _I_ didn't get the concern to begin with.” Tim, by request, is plastered to Sasha's back with arms around her shoulders like a human heating pad. “Pests this, hygiene that, why would Jon care? He hates this place as much as any of us. At best it'll force City of London to actually put money into renovation and repairs, which we could all use. Plus, I'm pretty sure he's a cat person.”

Sasha frowns, twisting to look at him, which results in some spluttering when Tim gets a mouthful of hair. “I'm pretty sure he's not an any-animal person when it comes to what's allowed in the museum, Tim.”

“Look, I've made my case. Continue naysaying if you like. I'm just putting out there that we don't _actually_ know finding the cats would make him want to fire us any more than whatever it is we're doing right now.”

The point is more than fair. Martin can't be simply imagining that Jon has grown warmer (hah) over the slow course of this past year, less the exasperated senior curator in charge and more – well, more what Martin suspects he actually is: a fellow sufferer in the museum's iron grip. They're all trapped here for some reason or other, even if Martin doesn't know Jon's. Sasha needs a job that'll allow her enough downtime to wrap up her PhD, Tim lost any and all serious interest in a career while working through a personal loss, and Martin... just really needs a London living wage, to be honest. You don't tend to get one of those stocking shelves.

Jon is clearly trying. He brought in hot water bottles for all of them today, no doubt paid for out of pocket because their petty cash has always been a joke, and slipped out of their office before they could even really thank him.

“I better go check on them for now,” Martin says, feeling suddenly tired. They've not even talked about how they're going to handle the week-end. If any of them could realistically take four cats home, they'd have done so already, and Jon's usually alone in covering the dreaded Sunday opening times. In any case: the cats, just like the three of them, could probably use a hot water bottle, and Martin bundled up especially warm this morning, so he reckons he'll be fine without his for the afternoon. “Not like either of you are going to volunteer, anyway.”

“Hey, I am engaged in a vital and work-related activity, and I don't appreciate your tone.”

His sigh is just melodramatic enough to still be in good fun. “Whatever you say, Tim.”

Arms wrapped tightly around his hot water bottle, Martin tiptoes past Jon's office, which necessarily slows him down enough to catch some of Jon's part of the conversation. The tone of his voice strikes Martin in an unexpected place: Jon is apologetic in a strained way, repeating his “genuinely sorry” and “I really assure you it won't happen again” in an increasingly begrudging voice, but mostly, he just sounds so _tired_. Martin often feels like a terrible employee, but Sasha wasn't wrong: this is a new low for all of them.

Worst of all, seeing the kittens actually helps. It's hard to develop an immunity to tiny stumbling animals who trust you, even for Martin, who wouldn't by the longest stretch consider himself a cat person. They've named all three, the democratic process of agreeing on names having quickly been abandoned in favour of assigning each of them one kitten.

“I know, I know,” says Martin in response to Frodo yelling loudly for affection at his feet. “Sorry I've not come up earlier. You've got me to thank for the best name out of you three, though. Shouldn't that count for something?”

Frodo disagrees, only quieting down when Martin gingerly picks him up to rub a thumb across the white spot between his ears.

“There,” he murmurs. “Happy now? You really are very impolite, you know.”

Frodo in both hands, the hot water bottle held close to his body with one arm, Martin makes his way to where the Duchess usually retreats on an old cushion they've tucked behind the desk. She blinks coolly at him, sleepily moving to stop Popcorn (intrepid as ever and named by Sasha specifically to spite Tim's very vocal protests) from attempting to climb Martin's leg.

He sighs. “Oh, of course. Apologies for disturbing Her Grace, it must be _such_ an inconvenience to be brought something warm and cosy to cuddle up with.”

The Duchess is generally less inclined to cuddle than her much smaller carbon copies, but seems to dislike Martin specifically, which hurts a little more than he'd like to admit. Maybe she can sense that he generally prefers dogs. Maybe she can see into people's souls and has deemed Martin unworthy of her children's affection.

Martin kneels down next to her, careful not to dislodge her too much as he reaches behind the cushion to slip the hot water bottle underneath. To his surprise, his hand knocks against something smooth and warm: there's a hot water bottle already, folded carefully into the pillowslip.

“Huh. Lucky you. Tim probably didn't need his, hm?”

The Duchess makes an impatient grumbling sound, and Martin retreats, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, taking my leave from Her Grace, I get it. I bet you just hate that your son can think for himself, don't you,” he mutters, more pettily than he can justify. Still, there's a strange sense of satisfaction in the fact that, instead of joining his siblings for their midday snack as Martin sets about refilling the bowls and cleaning out the litter box, Frodo prefers balancing on his shoulder, his small head tucked close to the crook of Martin's neck.

Some deliberation over lunch sees them come up with a plan for the week-end: Martin will stay a little later than usual and come in on Saturday as well, begging the spare alarm key off Jon with some excuse or other. Sasha is going to drop in during Sunday opening times, claiming to need something she's forgotten in the office, and brave her allergies to make sure everything's in order upstairs. So far, so good, so simple.

Standing before Jon's closed office door later that afternoon, it doesn't feel simple at all. Martin volunteered for Saturday because tricking Jon into giving out his treasured set of extra keys seems like a particularly horrible lie, and for some reason, pushing that over to Tim or Sasha would have made Martin feel even more rotten. None of that, unfortunately, serves to make the thing itself any easier.

He takes a deep breath, and knocks.

Surrounded by stacks of paper and several open books, Jon looks the way people tend to look at work on a Friday afternoon. He's resting his forehead on steepled fingers, eyes closed for a moment before he blinks tiredly at Martin.

For a wild moment, Martin is reminded of the Duchess, her copper eyes and her gently disapproving gaze.

“Hey,” he says softly, not quite daring to step inside the office. “Do you, uh, have a minute?”

Jon removes his glasses to rub his eyes. “If my supervisor is to be believed, I seem to have nothing but minutes.” He shakes his head, and gestures for Martin to come inside. “So, by all means.”

“What's all this?” Martin frowns at the deluge of paperwork strewn across Jon's desk. Jon is almost infuriatingly tidy, and tries hard not to fall behind on work. “I thought our financial year wrapped up last month.”

“Oh, it's all – marketing initiatives, and such. The board seems unhappy with our visitor count; I suppose you've noticed as well that people's taste for the macabre markedly dwindles during the holiday season.”

“Hard to understand, if you ask me,” Martin jokes half-heartedly. “Nothing more festive than taxidermy and supposedly occult artefacts.”

“Hm, perhaps we should lean into it. That dreadful mounted deer in the entrance hall could certainly use some tinsel.” Jon smiles wryly. “I'll dig out A Heavy Metal Christmas. Still have it buried somewhere at home, I think.”

Martin has no idea how to process the words that have just been said, or the mental image of Jon – scowling, hard-working, dead-serious Jon – going into a record shop to purchase a Christopher Lee Christmas album. He leaves them momentarily unexamined to find the mental capacity to say, “That's sort of what I wanted to ask about, actually? Tim's pointed out that we're a bit late with decorating for the holidays, and I've – well, I feel like I haven't really gotten anything done this week, and it's always easiest to do this stuff without the risk of someone else knocking over a ladder in a rush, so I thought – maybe I could come in and get it done tomorrow?” He adds, slightly panicked at Jon's frown, “In time for Sunday, I thought, first advent week-end and all, you never know if there aren't any – fans of the paranormal, or something, coming in for a spooky start to December?”

The frown of disapproval, if anything, has grown more pronounced. “I don't expect any of you to do overtime because of,” Jon gestures vaguely at his desk, “whatever this is. I realise I've not necessarily been – vocal about my appreciation in the past, but I truly don't think of you as a less hard worker than anyone here. I hope you're aware.”

Martin was not, in fact, aware, and has to put a pin in the thought anyway, because there's a plan to move on with and he's growing increasingly nervous about its chances of success. “Oh,” he squeaks intelligently. Then, “Ah, well, I mean, I could take a day off next week to make up the hours, then? Been meaning to get my shopping done for the holidays, anyway, and the city's unbearable at the week-ends, you know how it is –”

Under Jon's scrutiny, his attempt at continuing the excuse fizzles out, trickling into a quiet mumble.

“Very well,” says Jon, and Martin notices for the first time since he came in that he's shivering, just the slightest bit. “Remember to sign for it if you take the spare security key from the safe; the board seem to have enough to crucify me with without us losing one. Was there anything else?”

 _No, that's all, thank you, Jon_ , thinks Martin, and says, “Didn't you buy a hot water bottle for yourself?”

Jon, instead of bristling, looks suddenly flustered. “No, I did, I – you're right, I've forgotten all about it. I'll heat some water in a minute. Thank you, Martin.”

Recognising his pointed tone on those final words for the dismissal it is, Martin flees from the office without a second thought.

He spends the rest of the afternoon looking into marketing and PR, finding just about nothing he doesn't already know or that isn't self-evident when it comes to strategies of exposure and publicity. So far, none of them have bothered much with it on principle; the museum hardly deserves their efforts. On the other hand... well, on the other hand, if the board is suddenly on Jon to come up with a strategy, it's not entirely fair to leave him alone with it, and he's always been terrible at delegating.

Martin gives up at around seven, long after Tim and Sasha have signed out for the week-end, and packs up his things before heading up to check on the cats one final time. Jon hasn't stopped by to say he was leaving for the day, so Martin sneaks quietly by his office door, tiptoeing all the way up the stairs to the restoration office in which he must have earlier forgotten to switch off the light. A soft, orange glimmer shines through the crack beneath the door, and Martin stops short the moment he opens it.

It's the desk lamp that's on, casting the room in a dim glow. Right at the edge of the warm circle of light, in the half-dark where the old desk casts a shadow on the hardwood floors, sits Jon, his back resting against the radiator and his legs crossed before him. His arms form a cradle on his lap in which the Duchess, usually so shy of touch, is curled comfortably into a ball, purring loudly enough for Martin to hear from the doorway.

Frozen to the spot, Martin stares for long enough that a distant, lucid part of him begins to wonder why he's not being yelled at yet. Looking more closely, he realises that Jon's head is tipped forward, and his hair, pulled messily out of its ponytail, obscures most his face. He's – he's asleep, right here, with their _secret_ cat in his lap, and as Martin's eye travels down the ruffled curtain of black locks streaked with grey, he finds Frodo nestled in the crook of Jon's elbow, chewing peacefully on a strand of his hair.

The only solution is to back out. Careful as he can, Martin steps backwards, reaching for the doorknob. It's that simple movement which betrays him: Frodo, too clever for his own good, sees him, and abandons his project of hair-chewing in favour of meowing loudly. Martin flinches, hurrying to close the door, but Jon blinks awake a moment too soon.

His eyes, still sleepy in a way that makes Martin's heart clench a little bit, find Martin and instantly widen.

The first thing Martin can think to say, garbled and terrified as it comes out, is “I am _so_ sorry,” but it's swallowed up by Jon who says, without moving to disturb either of the cats, “I can explain.”

Jon seems, momentarily, lost. He looks down at the cats, then back at Martin. “What are you sorry for?”

“I – sorry, I'm – what do you mean, explain?”

“You don't believe finding your boss surrounded by cats in your workplace warrants an explanation?” It sounds like a joke, at first, and was definitely meant as one, but Martin doesn't catch on in time. Jon narrows his eyes at him, and Martin knows the tone that's coming all too well. “ _Martin_.”

“Hey, you don't get to go all – all warning and superior on me right now! This isn't a – a ' _Mar_ tin' situation, you clearly knew they were here!”

“Well, yes, they're my cats,” says Jon, mildly irritated. “Or – sort of, anyway. No less than they're anyone else's.” He pauses briefly to gently scratch the side of the Duchess's neck, as she appears to demand. Martin feels dizzy. “Did _you_ know they were here?”

“Did – Jon, we've been feeding them. Christ, we got them a litterbox –”

“What? Where? I hid one –”

“Under the shelf –”

“By the desk –”

They fall silent, each staring at the other in disbelief. A few long seconds pass. Frodo meows.

It causes Jon to look around. “Martin,” he says, and there it is again, that long, drawn-out first syllable of disapproval. “Was the door open this whole time?”

Martin, standing before a very much unguarded doorway, stills. He looks about the room. Two out of three kittens are nowhere to be seen. “Oh,” he says weakly, and turns to look into the corridor. Popcorn has been remarkably quick on her feet this past week, and too curious for her own good. “Oh, no.”

“Right.” With an apologetic rub between her ears, Jon nudges the Duchess to climb from his lap to the cushion, and deposits Frodo gently next to her. He stands up, walking out with Martin and shutting the door behind them both. “I doubt they've gone far, and at least it's not all four of them.”

“Nico gets scared, though,” says Martin. He's seen it more than once: the black kitten, shy to begin with, starts more quickly at noises than the others, and can usually be found in the smallest space available in the room. “If he hides somewhere in this place, there's a chance we'll never get to him –”

“Nico?” Jon frowns. “You named them?”

“Of course we did! They're living creatures, we watched them for a week – oh, Christ, and Popcorn could have gone downstairs if she wanted –”

Now scandalised, “ _Popcorn_?”

“There's no _time_ to feel affronted, Jon!” Most rooms on the second storey are part of the permanent exhibition and, in consequence, sparsely furnished, but two are for storage and, for a small kitten, positively labyrinthine. “Your wounded dignity isn't going to help us when we find Popcorn trying to – eat an oil painting, or whatever she'll be up to.”

“It's only been two minutes,” says Jon. “I'm sure they're just fine. Now, I'll take the laboratory, if you're willing to go through the cabinet of horrors.”

No one in their right mind could possibly be willing, but Martin still accepts, mostly because the idea of a kitten loose in there makes his panic spike yet again. The room gained its nickname by being a mess from a curatorial and a positive nightmare from any normal person's standpoint – God, they have zoological specimens in that thing, there are _skeletons_.

His sweep of the room is anything but strategic. He crawls on his knees looking for a reflection of eyes beneath the display cases or perhaps the swish of a tail from behind some furniture; after a while, he switches approaches and starts cooing to an empty room, whispering the kittens' names like they'll suddenly come to their senses at the sound of them.

When he notices himself slipping into baby talk, he declares the room, tentatively, kitten-free. It's not much of a relief.

“Anything, Jon?”

“Not yet,” calls Jon from a few rooms over. “I'm in book storage.”

That leaves the art collection for Martin. From the doorway already, it seems hopeless: paintings are stacked haphazardly on any and all available surfaces, the luckier ones with bubble wrap between frames, but most simply stuffed wherever they'll fit with very little care. It is a room of gaps and tunnels to the point where moving without toppling a tower of sketchbooks or bringing a baroque frame crashing down is difficult – if one is Martin, that is; he suspects the same can't be said for a 15 ounce kitten.

“Popcorn?” He steps into the room, flinching when he's immediately answered by a pitiful little mewl. “Nico? Is that you? Are – oh, oh no.”

The dim light makes Nico's black fur practically invisible, but on a shelf at the back, precariously close to the edge of a particularly obnoxious portrait, Martin sees the vague outline of a white paw.

“Okay,” he says, “okay, you're okay, yeah? I'm heading your way, I'll be right with you –”

Nico, sounding increasingly desperate, repeats his plea. When Martin manages with some manoeuvring to get in front of the shelf, the situation appears dire: the massive portrait frame is far too large for the shelf and as such hangs over the edge nearly by half; Nico, tiny as he is, does not appear to trust the overhang to hold him, and from the current angle, Martin can't reach out to safely grab him.

“Hi, Nico, I'm - I'm really glad to see you,” he tries, keeping his voice deliberately low. Careful not to move the painting, he holds a hand to the edge of it, fingers curled into his palm. “It's really scary, isn't it? All alone up there in the dark. I bet you miss your siblings and your mum, hm?”

A scratching noise, and the gentlest movement on the canvas. Martin smiles.

“There we go. Tell you what, I get it, you know? It's horrible, having to move around on shaky ground like that. No fun at all. If you come just a little closer, I'll get you right back to your room and your nice warm pillow, there – look, there we go, love, _słoneczko_ , there you go...”

He feels Nico's cold nose on his fingers before he sees him, and carefully tucks a hand around his small body, lifting him off the frame to press him securely to his chest. Martin exhales, noticing only now how close he'd been to hyperventilating. “Christ, you scared me. I'm so sorry I let you slip away like that.”

Nico makes a soft chirping sound, digging his nose into Martin's jumper. Martin turns to begin making his way slowly back out of the room, and immediately startles. Standing in the doorway is Jon, who watches him with a strange expression on his face.

Martin sends a vague plea out into the universe for the ground to swallow him up – not unlikely, anyway, considering they're in the second storey of a very old building that's had its fair share of woodworm. Of course Jon was watching. Of course he's seen (worse, _heard_ ) the entirety of that nonsensical little display, as if he needed more reason to think of Martin as an inane, bumbling –

“I've, uh.” Jon lifts his hands which hold a thoroughly content-looking Popcorn. “I've found her.”

“Oh, oh, thank God. That's both of them, then, that's – good.”

Jon shifts on his feet. “Yes. I told you, they wouldn't have gone far.”

“What a little delinquent you are,” Martin chides Popcorn as they carry both kittens back to the restoration office. “So smug, too. Just look at her.”

“I know.” Jon smiles, a private, genuine thing that makes Martin's heart stutter. “She's utterly unrepentant. Not that you'd ever guess those criminal tendencies from her name alone.”

“Come on, it's not that bad.”

Jon raises a meaningful eyebrow. “Why Nico? And what did you name the others? Don't tell me it gets worse.”

“I think it's Niccolò, actually. Tim's been reading _The Mandrake_.” Martin sets their miniature Machiavelli down with the Duchess, who curls protective paws around him. “Sasha was just in a vengeful mood. And that's Frodo, right there.”

The striped brown kitten appears to have missed the company. He walks on wobbly legs over to Martin, pawing inconsequentially at his jeans before Martin has mercy on him and lifts him into his lap.

For a moment, they sit in silence on the office floor, and a quiet sense of relief settles slowly.

Then, Jon starts to laugh.

The sound is soft and bright and infectious, and it's one that Martin isn't sure he's ever heard from Jon. Hearing it now unravels a knot in his chest. He giggles, undignified and uncaring, and presses a hand to his mouth to keep in a snort.

“Lord, this is absurd.” Jon takes off his glasses to wipe at a single stray tear. “I still don't understand what happened. If you took care of them for a week, where did you think they came from? Why didn't you tell me?”

“None of us could take them in.” Martin shifts uneasily where he's kneeling on the floor. “And it – uh, it didn't seem like the greatest idea to let you know? Tim was really the only one who thought it wouldn't lose us our jobs.”

“Ah.” Jon's smile is brittle. Martin wants to reel all those words back in. “I understand.”

“No, look, Jon, it really wasn't fair,” tries Martin. “It felt awful, running circles around you this past week. I hated it. And we shouldn't have just assumed. You're –” He stops. It's a strange balance to maintain, trying to be kinder than before without giving away something that'd inevitably make things worse. “You're really good at what you do. I know this job matters to you, and it – it probably feels like we're not always taking it seriously? To be honest, I think we were all a little ashamed. Not that, uh, hiding four cats from you is necessarily proof of us doing better.”

Jon nods. He silently holds out a hand to the Duchess, who tucks her head against it, allowing him to ruffle her fur.

Martin bites at his lip. It feels like something fragile that was only just spinning into existence is being undone again, and he's not prepared to stand by and watch it happen. “Did you bring them in, then?”

“Hm.” Jon tickles the Duchess's chin. “I found Guinevere here a couple of months ago. She was a stray, unchipped and living in a rather unsafe area, so – taking her home was the best I could do, and then the little ones arrived. We cleared them a room, but we have another cat, and there were some renovations in the flat this week, with the landlord stopping by sporadically, and since the lease doesn't actually allow us to keep pets in the first place...” He shrugs. “It's possible to hide _one_ cat at short notice, but not five. I figured there was only so much damage they could do in here for a week. My roommate texted earlier; I can take them home tonight.”

“Jon, that's –” _Deeply irresponsible_. _Unbelievably ill-advised_. _Terrifyingly endearing_. Martin doesn't dare to finish the sentence. “ _Jesus_ , Jon. I thought I hated this place.”

“I don't, actually.” His tone is light in a way it never usually is, like he's too tired to care about what he's giving away. “That's the strange part. I try to, because, I mean, just look at it. By rights, we should have closed a decade ago. And I know I'm not improving the situation; I'm really quite sure they hired me specifically so someone would finally run the museum into the ground for good. I know I'm not up to the job.” He gestures at the office and its occupants. “Evidently. In any case, I can't hate it. It pays, for one, but it's also... well.” He laughs, and it's so unlike earlier, so quiet and defeated, that Martin has to resist the impulse to reach out and lay a comforting hand on his arm. “I think this might be the friendliest work environment I've ever had. It's rare to feel welcome somewhere.”

Later, thinks Martin. Later, he will allow himself to process this seismic shift fully, and he will think to the end each and every one of the implications these fragile and precious revelations bring along, and he will have a bit of a panic and maybe a good cry about them and hopefully be all the better for it. Perhaps he'll even find the right thing to say.

For now, he keeps his bearings. He takes a breath. He says, “Do you want to go get something to eat?”

At Jon's startled look, he hurries to clarify, “I mean, as in, would you like to go somewhere warm and eat something after a long day and the exertion of herding kittens – just – if you like? Unless – you'll probably want to take them home as soon as possible, that's fine too, I just thought I'd offer since you seemed really exhausted earlier, so –”

“All right.” Jon is looking down, but Martin can't quite do him the courtesy of looking away as well. He's smiling, and perhaps it's a trick of the light, but his cheeks appear darker, as if flushed with warmth. “I don't suppose they'll mind another hour in here. They've seemed happy enough for a week.”

“I mean, they would.” Martin groans at the realisation. “God, we _double_ -fed them.”

“Hey, she's a new mother.” Jon curls careful fingers in the Duchess's fur. “Don't let him shame you, now, you're just right. Between the two of us, the man's got horrendous ideas of what constitutes an appropriate amount of tea to consume in a day.”

The rush of affection is difficult to weather. Martin feels drunk on it. He wants violently, for a moment; he wants to pitch Jon a social media strategy so he'll feel less alone and he wants to help him bring the kittens safely to a home, a home that they _have_ and have had all along because Jon offered it without thinking; he wants to carry Frodo in his pocket to the Vietnamese place a few streets away and listen to Jon talk about just... whatever. Anything. The museum is freezing cold and Nico most definitely did some damage on one of the most important paintings in their collection and they are being sued by nobility and Jon has established squatter's rights on City of London property for a family of cats, and things feel suddenly possible.

They get their coats. Martin manages to talk Jon into borrowing the scarf Sasha has deliberately forgotten in their office, and on their walk to the restaurant, their breath makes clouds as they speak. Jon talks about flavour enhancers and Arthurian legends and kitten psychology. When they get back, Martin can see from afar the lone window in the museum's upper storey that is still lit by a single desk lamp, its soft glow a warm respite from cold winter air.

It looks suspiciously like a home. 

**Author's Note:**

> On the off chance that anyone reading this happens to be following my tonally Very Different JGM fic - I promise the next chapter is nearly finished, but this story ran away with me a little bit. The holidays have a way of encouraging fluff, and writing kittenfic felt like a desperately needed change of pace. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope you're safe & well. Come say hi [on tumblr](https://lesamis.tumblr.com/) if you like. 🧡


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